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Reviving the Swan, Extending the Curse of Methuselah, or Adhering to the Kevorkian Ethic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

George P. Smith II
George P. Smith II
Affiliation:
Wolf son College, Cambridge University, and a Professor of Law, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

Methuselah, it is said, lived 969 years. His state of health at death is not revealed. It can only be surmised that he was surely not robust and, no doubt, was subject to all of the infirmities of old age and the tragic indignities associated with senility.

Jonathan Swift captured well the “curse” of immortality when, in Gulliver's Travels, he created a group of individuals, the Struldbrugs, who, when encountered, dulled what had heretofore been an appetite for perpetual life. The Struldbrugs were allowed to be born totally exempt from the “calamity of human Nature,” in that their minds were free “and disingaged (sic), without the Weight and De pression of Spirits caused by the continued Apprehension of Death.” They were thus condemned “to a perpetual continuance in the World.” In his travels, Gulliver found some Struldbrugs well over 1,000 years old.

Type
Special Section: Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: Murder or Mercy?
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Winter 1993 , pp. 49 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes

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